Defiance Of The Flesh
by Day of Diana
Summary: Cal is struck by the revelation that his daughter is not the sweet, innocent girl she once was. When Emily deviously defies him and later cries for his help, will he rise to her rescue? Cal/Gillain. Also includes a surprise pairing you'll never guess.


_Hey everyone! This is my first foray into the wonderful fanfiction of _Lie to Me*_! As you probably guessed, it is Cal/Gillian, but there is an easter egg pairing in here that will be revealed in the second (and last) chapter. Thanks for checkin' out my story!_

_Also, fair warning, I don't do much justice to Emily's character. This is because I don't like her very much. She does play a large part in this story but I'm writing her how I think she would act. So don't get all defensive and engage murder-mode if you think I portray her in a bad way. Just move on to some other story and have your fluffy Emily coddle-fest somewhere else 'cuz I'm not in the mood for it. _

**DISCLAIMER: **_I dun own _Lie to Me*_ but if I did Loker and Emily would so have been a canon pairing. Also, Kelli Williams would come speak at my college. ;o) hOnK hOnK_

_Also, the fabulous person who got me into this fandom in the first place is _JanuaryLight. _I dedicate this story to you, bro. You're the bestest. (And hey, guys, you should totally check out her work!) _

D++++++++++++++++++++++++++F

It was a fine snowy evening. Cal was situated in his favorite cozy chair and had a roaring fire going in the grate. He periodically sipped from a glass of perfectly aged red wine while he read Sathryn Mullen's latest lesbian rom com masterpiece.

He chuckled over a few of the main protagonist's lines, wondering how Mullen managed to capture the female mind's inner workings so well in print. As his thumb and forefinger eagerly pinched the right-hand page's upper corner, preparing to turn to the next page of witty writing, he heard his daughter Emily walking quietly down the stairs. He knew she had a date with someone tonight. Eric... was that the boy's name? Or was it Elliot? Emily brought home so many dirtbags that it was hard to remember one from the other.

"Hold it right there, love. Show me what sleazy get-up you're wearing before you parade down Knickerbocker Street."

The footsteps paused for a moment, then resumed downward again with much more noise. Cal had angered her; and this was just as well, he thought, because it meant her attitude might sour her date and she would return home early, safe and sound.

"I'm not wearing anything 'sleazy'. For god's sake, Dad, it's snowing outside."

Cal set down his novel and glass of wine and cocked his head at the entrance to the den, where he could see the shadowy outline of his daughter.

"Come forward into the light, darlin'."

"Dad- he's here already. I don't wanna make him wait."

Cal could hear the calculated whine in Emily's voice. Heh, she hoped he'd buy that? If she thought she could get away by playing the pouty cutie card, she was sorely mistaken.

He pretended to consider the boy of the night's feelings. "Oh, he's here? Well, making him wait for another minute or ten won't do any harm to him, will it? Now come on, show me your pretty dress under your pretty coat."

Emily shuffled. She was still hiding in the darkness of the doorway. "Um, I don't think you'd like it. Mom bought it for me- it's not really my color but I think it does my figure justice...um..."

Cal let her suffer for a few more minutes, pondering the real reason why she wouldn't show him her outfit. She stuttered out some more pathetic excuses, and then there was a knock on the door.

"I'll get it!" she half-yelled. Cal was about to demand that she stay where she was, but Emily was too fast. And since the door was only five feet away from her position, she was able to wrench it open quickly and run out into the snow, pulling her confused date behind her.

"Oi!" Cal hopped up like a wired jackrabbit and tried to pursue Emily, but the boy slammed the door in his face. He banged right into it and stumbled backwards, stars spangling in front of his eyes and his nose gushing blood.

"Motherfucker!" With one of his hands covering half of his face, he managed to tug the door open again, only to be blasted by a veritable avalanche of snow.

Cursing and holding his bleeding nose, blinking the snow from his vision, he staggered down the porch in his robe and slippers. Following the gleeful, maniacal laughter of his daughter and her escort was no difficult task, made even easier by the fact that the two were still gasping for breath from laughing on the front lawn.

"Emily! You get over here this instant or so help me I will ground your ass!" Despite his pain, Cal worked quite a bit of rage into his voice.

However, far from obeying Cal's orders, Emily spun around to face her father and violently yanked her winter coat open.

"Now you know why I couldn't show you before, Dad!" Emily giggled madly. "It's because there's nothing to show!"

The boy beside her gawked for a moment at her young, nubile, naked body. Then he grabbed her arm and steered her towards the car, shoving her into the shotgun seat.

They drove off before Cal could fully comprehend the meaning of what Emily had just done.

D++++++++++++++++++++++++++F

He felt like he'd stood in the swirling snow for hours. Of course, it was probably only about a minute before he came to his senses and wandered slowly back to the front door of his house. As he approached the porch, an icy feeling swept and tingled all over his body that had nothing to do with the earliest warning signs of frostbite.

Cal hardly noticed what he was doing as his legs directed him to sink into the comfiest chair in the den. He reclined in the Lay-Z-Boy, no longer stemming the free-flowing blood still trickling down his chin. The glass of wine and the rom com novel rested on a small stand next to the chair, promising familiar comfort. But he was chilled to the bone, numb all around, not thinking clearly for the first time in a long time. But there was something he was quite certain of at the moment.

The number of people Cal trusted was down to one.

A few hours later, when he was warmer and more in his right mind, he still couldn't understand why Emily had done what she'd done. Was she finally, at age seventeen, entering the rebellious stage of adolescence? No, it seemed a bit late for that, really. Was she on drugs, then? Drugs could cause people to do insane things. He would know. Or did the boy put her up to it? No... the idiot seemed just as surprised as he was when she had revealed herself. The guy's body language had suggested as much, anyway.

Cal swallowed a bit more wine than he should have as an image of his daughter's youthful, lithe body popped into his head. He coughed forcefully, pounding his chest to help his trachea expel the alcohol and thwacking himself on his left temple to dispel the mental picture of his naked little girl's nymphette-like physique.

Nymphette-like? God, he had to stop obsessing over _Lolita_.

Wait a minute, he'd never even read _Lolita. _But Foster had told him about it. Talked about it a lot, in fact. And he'd let her go on and on about it. She had the strangest taste in classic literature.

"Gillian..." Cal whispered, picking up his glass of wine. He glanced over at the lesbian rom com. Foster had suggested that he read that popular book. He trusted her judgment more often than he said he did.

But he hadn't called Foster yet to tell her about this odd situation. He never liked to bother her with his own family troubles, even though she was practically Emily's stepmother and took every opportunity to help the girl out now that the teen's own mother lived so far away. She'd usually suggest some solution or another that didn't coincide with his ideas on parenting. It was one of the hundreds of things that they didn't see eye to eye on.

Pushing those distinctly unpleasant thoughts out of his mind, he chose some other excuse to delude himself about why he didn't want her to know about his problems. Ah, here was one: Foster was probably asleep now anyway, tucked snugly into her roomy California king.

Gillian.

In bed.

He shivered. The fire in the grate had sunk low among its fuel; tiny tongues of orange flame licked the wood lazily, devouring the kindling slowly. It was almost midnight.

Cal's eyes drifted to the space over the fireplace mantle, where a large family painting presented pristine images of himself and his daughter. He sank even further into the recliner and drank more of the dark red alcohol, grimacing. There was nothing he could do about the bizarre situation with Emily. There was no way he could chase after her in the snowy weather, which had increasingly worsened over the course of the evening. He supposed there was nothing for it but to wait until she arrived home, which he was certain she would, in the wee hours of the morning.

It wasn't the first time she had stayed out as late as she dared. And it wasn't the first time she had tested the ever-muddying waters of their relationship, either. Things like this had happened before. Well, not exactly as the reader might think. Tonight was the first time she had ever actually blatantly bared her date plans. Why, Emily? Why? She had been the sweetest little girl. Her sweetness balanced out his own 'spiciness', as Foster affectionately dubbed his personality quirks. Emily wasn't the brightest, no, but Cal had thought her temperament would make for a happy little family of two. Or three, once he married again. Or four... if Gillian wanted a baby.

"Of course she does," Cal said aloud to the reflection in his wineglass. "You've just gotta let her know and she'll either go for you or not. What's the big deal? Foster-no, no. Gillian, will you take a gigantic leap of faith and marry me?"

Pathetic. He took another drink and grimaced.

Why would she ever go for someone like him? Sure, they worked together well as business partners and he'd even successfully flirted with her a couple of times. But actually living together? His outrageous, hormonally charged teenage daughter aside, would it really work? They were such different people. And she wanted children. He knew she craved children.

He also knew she was helplessly infertile. Such a cruel thing, when all she desired could be formed only in her own child.

And he didn't know if he could raise another one, if he even wanted to.

But-

He loved her. Yes, he'd give her his genetic material and she'd pick suitable surrogate genes. Together they would choose the host, the one that Gillian would grudgingly but with hope place her utmost trust in over the next three-quarters of a year. Then they would cast the mold in the iron and wait by the forge, stoking it and stoking it. And out would come their baby.

Ah, such flights of fancy he entertained when he was half-drunk and six blinks away from slumber!

"Well, I'll see. If I don't do it in the next few years, she's bound to be snatched up by someone else. Hell, she already has, what, three exes? I'm slippin' on thin ice."

With that worrisome thought nagging in the back of his sodden encephalon, Cal placed his empty wine glass on the stand beside the chair and fell asleep.

D++++++++++++++++++++++++++F

At two o'clock in the bloody morning he was woken up by the shrill ringtone of his cellphone. The sound pierced his foggy mind, rippling through the mist of the wine still lurking in the sulci of his brain.

"Augh, gotta take a piss. Hold the phone," he told the impatient device. The cellphone paid him no heed and continued ringing even after he left the den for the bathroom.

By the time he had come back, though, a voice-mail was already recorded.

"Figures," Cal murmured, groaning as he sat back in his recliner. The call didn't strike him odd until two minutes later when he fuzzily reasoned that someone shouldn't be phoning him so early in the morning.

Emily...? No, she should be home by now. He'd check up on her later and give her the sternest talking to in the morning.

Maybe it had been Gillian? Oh god.

The cellphone proved difficult to navigate in his booze-induced haze, but he eventually found the voice-mail. Strangely enough, it wasn't from anyone he expected. It was from Loker.

"Hey, Dr. Lightman. So, uh, this is Loker. Yeah, um, there's kinda this- well, I wouldn't call it a _problem _per se, but this- situation requires rather immediate attention. So I thought maybe you could, um, help me out? Please pick up. Please? Okay, I know you're... probably angry with me right now but I think I've really made an important connection here and I'd really like to see it through to the end. And I know I probably shouldn't, but I think I'm on the right track and I feel really good about this. Dr. Lightman?"

There was a sigh and then Loker covered the speaker with his hand. Cal heard a loud cry on the other end of the line. It seemed like his employee was trying to calm someone who was hysterical. Just peachy. Cal absolutely _loved _the clients who paid his company equal parts money and histrionics.

Loker began talking again a minute later, more quietly this time. Cal pressed the cellphone to his ear as hard as he could.

"Okay, well, I'm kind of in a bind now but I guess calling at two in the morning isn't exactly the best time to contact you. I'm gonna phone Foster now. Please call me when you get this. Please."

There was a click and the message ended. Cal pondered the plea for help. It wasn't as if Loker hadn't dealt with overly emotional clients before; they just weren't his specialty. And why would Cal be angry with him, other than the fact that he had called absurdly early? Had the curly-haired man sunk any lower on Cal's shit list in the past week? No, Cal didn't recall anything worthy of note. But Loker had sounded terribly anxious on the phone, not smug, sullen, sarcastic or splenetic as he usually did when talking to his boss. Something was wrong here.

"Oh. Waitaminute. Why would that git be workin' at two o'clock in the morning... on a Sunday?"

Cal called 'that git' back straightaway after he said this aloud, his mind running through the question he had posed to himself not ten seconds before. However, Loker's phone was busy. He must've gotten through to Foster.

D++++++++++++++++++++++++++F

_Boom! Cliffhanger! Aw yiss. So this story is a two-parter. Tune in for the next chapter if you like! If you don't like, that's okay too. Thanks for checkin' this fic out. While you're walkin' away I'll be checkin' out your booty. ;o) hOnK hOnK (And second Homestuck reference is checked off the list. Yeah!) _

_Please review. I like reviews. They make me smile. _


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